Henry Wittenberg, Champion
Wrestler, Dies at 91
Henry Wittenberg, an Olympic gold and silver medalist who became one
of America’s greatest amateur wrestlers while he was a New York City
police officer, died on Tuesday at his home in Somers, N.Y. He was 91.
His death was announced by his family.
As a teenager, Wittenberg was devoted to chess and swimming. It was not
until he arrived at City College that he turned to wrestling. He became
a collegiate star, and after graduating in 1940, he dominated national
and international freestyle wrestling in his weight group. He went
undefeated in more than 300 consecutive matches during the 1940s,
according to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
With World War II forcing the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944
Olympics, Wittenberg missed out on a chance for medals in his physical
prime.
But after serving in the Navy, he won the light heavyweight (191.5
pounds) freestyle wrestling gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics. He won a
silver medal at the 1952 Helsinki Games after Wiking Palm of Sweden,
the gold-medal winner, ended his unbeaten streak.
Wittenberg won eight national Amateur Athletic Union championships, his
last one in April 1952. He coached wrestling at Yeshiva
University and City College, and he was the coach of the United
States Greco-Roman wrestling team at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He
was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater,
Okla., in 1977.
Wittenberg trained for his matches by running to the top rows at City
College’s Lewisohn Stadium, leaping over the seats to strengthen his
legs, and he lifted weights, an unorthodox regimen at the time.
“I was one of the first weight-lifting wrestlers,” he told Mike Chapman
for his book “Wrestling Tough” (2005). “I had weights at home and
lifted very seriously, several times a week.”
Wittenberg recalled that Art Griffith, the coach of the 1948 United
States Olympic freestyle wrestlers, “told the team he didn’t want any
of us lifting weights because it would make us muscle bound.”
But, he added, “I told him I was going to lift anyway, and he said,
‘O.K., but don’t let the other guys see you doing it.’ ”
Henry Wittenberg was born on Sept. 18, 1918, in Jersey City. While at
Dickinson High School he was captain of the chess team and loved to
swim but could not make proper turns in the pool.
His instructor, Wittenberg told The New York Times long afterward,
said: “Kid, forget it. You’ll never be a swimmer. You’ve got no
intestinal fortitude. You know what that means? You’ve got no guts.”
But Wittenberg was hardly discouraged. At City College, he became a
protégé of Joe Sapora, the wrestling coach and a former N.C.A.A. champion at the University
of Illinois.
After competing in the N.C.A.A. national championships, Wittenberg went
to Columbia
University’s Teachers College. He received a master’s degree in
1941 and sought a teaching job, but there were few openings, so he
became a police officer. He recalled winning five citations for
bravery, one of them for disarming a holdup man wielding an ax and a
gun on a Manhattan rooftop. He retired as a sergeant in 1954.
Notwithstanding Wittenberg’s wrestling achievements, an Olympic Games
staged long after his competitive years tempered his love for the
Olympic movement.
Wittenberg had been a two-time wrestling champion at the Maccabiah
Games in Israel, the international competition for Jewish athletes.
He visited Jerusalem before the 1972 Munich Olympics, giving pointers
to the Israeli wrestling team. On the night of Sept. 4, 1972,
Wittenberg and his wife, Edith, spent time at a Munich hotel with their
friend Yosef Gutfreund, an Israeli wrestling referee.
The next day, Gutfreund and 10 fellow Israelis — athletes and coaches —
were killed when Palestinian
terrorists invaded the Olympic village.
“The whole concept of the Games was turned upside down,” Wittenberg
told Newsday 20
years later. “It was murder for political reasons. People go to war and
get killed, all right. The Olympics were fun.”
Wittenberg is survived by his son, Michael, of Pleasantville, N.Y.; his
daughter, Susan Wittenberg, of Manhattan; and two grandsons. His wife,
a former New York City police officer who fenced at Hunter
College and coached women’s fencing at City College, died in 2008.
When Wittenberg reigned as an Olympic champion, professional wrestling
was a staple of television’s early years. Vern Gagne, whom Wittenberg
defeated in the finals of the 1948 Olympic trials, became a popular
pro. But Wittenberg had no interest in the hair-pulling and stamping of
the pro circuit, however lucrative.
“l was a wrestler,” he told The Times. “I wasn’t an actor.”